Anthropic and the Trump Administration Deny Discussing Government Stake
A person familiar with the matter says no talks have taken place, hours after a report that OpenAI had proposed giving Washington 5% of the company.
July 3, 2026 – 7:59 am
Image by: The White House
The Trump administration and Anthropic have not discussed the government taking an equity stake in the AI company, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
The denial follows a Financial Times report earlier the same day that OpenAI had proposed handing Washington a 5% stake in itself, an arrangement said to potentially extend to Anthropic, Google and Meta as well.
According to an unnamed source, no talks have taken place, contrary to the FT’s report. Anthropic declined to comment directly when asked by Reuters, and both the White House and Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The story that prompted the denial centers around a Financial Times report suggesting OpenAI had proposed giving the US government a 5% equity stake worth roughly $42.6 billion at OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation from its March funding round.
The structure under discussion would reportedly involve donating shares, not selling them, into a public wealth fund modelled loosely on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, an idea OpenAI first floated in an April policy paper.
Sam Altman has been raising some version of this proposal with the administration since early 2025, according to people familiar with the discussions.
What made Thursday’s story noteworthy for Anthropic was a specific detail: that the proposed structure envisions other major US AI firms ceding similar stakes alongside OpenAI.
Naming a company in a hypothetical structure is not the same as that company agreeing to join it, and Anthropic’s non-denial—or at least its declining to elaborate beyond the unnamed source’s account—leaves the question formally open even as Thursday’s story tried to close it.
The idea of Washington holding equity in frontier AI labs is not new. President Trump expressed interest in such a move last month, calling it "a beautiful thing" that would make Americans "partners in this revolution." Around the same time, Commerce Department officials lifted export controls on two of Anthropic’s most advanced models.
A more aggressive version of this proposal exists in Congress. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation imposing a one-time 50% stock tax on large AI companies, with proceeds going into a public fund estimated to eventually reach $7 trillion.
Compared to Sanders’ proposal, OpenAI’s 5% pitch seems less a charitable gesture and more a hedge against something larger being forced upon it.